Rachel Maddow looks at the oddly aggressive streak in Donald Trump's legal team and reports on an angry meltdown by the head of Trump's legal team, Marc Kasowitz, in which Kasowitz replied to a stranger's e-mailed criticism with curses and threats.

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

At the end of a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday morning, someone sitting near Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) didn’t switch off a microphone. Collins was recorded discussing the federal budget and President Trump’s lack of familiarity with the details of governing with a colleague — apparently Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies subcommittee.

After Reed praises Collins’s leadership of the hearing, she laments the administration’s handling of spending.

“I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was ‘grant,’ they just X it out,” Collins says. “With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It’s just incredibly irresponsible.”

“Yes,” Reed replies. “I think — I think he’s crazy,” apparently referring to the president. “I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.”

“I’m worried,” Collins replies.

“Oof,” Reed continues. “You know, this thing — if we don’t get a budget deal, we’re going to be paralyzed.”

“I know,” Collins replies.

“[Department of Defense] is going to be paralyzed, everybody is going to be paralyzed,” Reed says.

“I don’t think he knows there is a [Budget Control Act] or anything,” Collins says, referring to a 2011 law that defines the budget process.

“He was down at the Ford commissioning,” Reed says, referring to President Trump’s weekend event launching a new aircraft carrier, “saying, ‘I want them to pass my budget.’ Okay, so we give him $54 billion and then we take it away across the board which would cause chaos.”

“Right,” Collins replies.

“It’s just — and he hasn’t — not one word about the budget. Not one word about the debt ceiling,” Reed says.

“Good point,” Collins replies.

“You’ve got [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney saying we’re going to put in all sorts of stuff like a border wall. Then you’ve got [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin saying it’s got to be clean,” Reed continues. “We’re going to be back in September, and, you know, you’re going to have crazy people in the House.”

In a more salacious part of what was recorded, Collins then addressed a radio interview in which Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) suggested that if Collins were a man, he’d have challenged her to a duel for opposing the Senate Republicans’ Obamacare overhaul bill.

“Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?” Collins asks.

“I know,” Reed replies. “Trust me. Do you know why he challenged you to a duel? ‘Cause you could beat the s— out of him.”

“Well, he’s huge,” Collins replies. “And he — I don’t mean to be unkind, but he’s so unattractive it’s unbelievable.”

“Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?” she continues, referring to an infamous photo of Farenthold, below.

Candid, honest words, bipartisan. Look at the article and see what Farenthold looks like and you'll have to agree with Collins.

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Former President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter said Tuesday that President Donald Trump calling for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted is an “impeachable offense.”

Painter sent out a tweet in reference to an early morning Twitter rant from Trump on Tuesday in which he continued to criticize Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Painter said that pressuring Sessions to prosecute Clinton is an impeachable offense. The President prosecuting his former competitor is not illegal, but Painter hinted it is not morally correct, saying if we truly value free elections, Trump should not be able to prosecute Clinton.

Pressuring AG to prosecute the person who lost the election is an impeachable offense if we value free elections. https://t.co/3J78u9ucZb

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

Donald Trump is not a well man. He’s in touch with reality the way a basketball is in touch with the ground -- on one tiny point of its circumference, and that's bouncing like a mofo. Craziest of all, he thinks no one else is onto him, and so he thinks nothing of telling lies that are easily disproven and will embarrass him later.

Case in point.

“I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful,” Trump said, also disputing claims the crowd gave a mixed reaction to the controversial speech.

“And by the way, I’d be the first to admit mixed. I’m a guy that will tell you mixed. There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix,” the president added.

at least they recognized trump was mentally ill from the get go. They maybe should get major awards for being heroes if this is true, for what they are trying to do. Both of these generals so far I do respect of all the trump picks to anything.

Kelly and Mattis had a pact: One of them must remain in the US at all times to supervise Trump

Quote:

In a sea of stories now swirling about Donald Trump's new chief of staff and former Homeland Security Secretary, John Kelly, this paragraph about him and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis from an AP report stands apart.

Mattis and Kelly also agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the administration’s internal dynamics.
Just wow.

Immediately after Donald Trump got elected, we were faced with a question, "Who could save us?

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As Trump Rages, CNN Panel Openly Questions Whether Trump Is Fit For Office
Members of a CNN panel on Tuesday openly questioned whether President Donald Trump is mentally fit for office after he held a boisterous and unrestrained rally in Phoenix.

“There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else,” CNN’s Don Lemon said immediately after the rally.
David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said Trump was “totally unhinged” during the speech. Rick Wilson, a conservative pundit, went even further.
“It was an astounding chain of lies tied together by lunatic asides by a man who obviously is mentally unstable. I mean, I’m not joking about it or being a smartass; this is a man who is not well,” Wilson said. “This is a man who is not qualified or mentally or morally fit to be the president of the United States and tonight was one more proof of it.”

Lawmakers have also questioned Trump’s competence.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. And we need for him to be successful, our nation needs for him to be successful,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters last week.

Calling the speech "downright scary and disturbing," James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said he was worried about Trump exercising the powers of the presidency.

"I worry about frankly the access to nuclear codes. In a fit of pique, if he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him."

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

Pundits on CNN were caught speechless on Sunday after President Donald Trump retweeted a video of him hitting Hillary Clinton with a golfball.

“The president of the United States retweeted that this morning,” CNN host John King noted. “Why?”

“He’s a disrupter,” New York Times reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis explained. “He has these impulses, he enjoys engaging on social media. You hear him talking about that, that is so important to his identity. People want to hear from him.”

“But it is unusual,” she admitted.

“See, we can’t find the words,” King agreed. “It’s interesting because he is the president of the United States. It is insane kind of.”

_________________when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.

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